Free Health Screening For About 400,000 SHS Entrants

About 490,514 of the second batch of the Free School High School beneficiaries will receive free medical screening to ensure they’re in good health for their academic work.

The Ghana Health Service (GHS) would jointly do this with the Ghana Education Service (GES).

These came out at the end of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which the two institutions signed in Accra on Friday.

Dr. Anthony Nsiah-Asare, the Director-General of GHS said it is geared towards realizing the Universal Health Goal.

Students, he said, would be taken through Eye, X-ray, BP, Physical Education (PE) screening and educated on nutrition.

Dr. Nsiah-Asare said the maiden exercise, conducted in 2017 nationwide, had about 300,000 of students screened at the various SHS.

He said the initiative would help strengthen school health, adding that they would later push for a policy on keeping a database of the students and follow their health history throughout their lives.

This would help in disease control and surveillance in the country in general, the Director-General added.

He noted that the programme had become necessary because apart from the prisons, schools were also concentrated, making it necessary to screen them, and those found sick treated before putting them together as well as manage those with special cases.

After the exercise, students would be aligned with health facilities within the communities the schools operate, in order for them to be properly taken care off with support from their sickbays in case any of them falls sick, he explained.

A side that, health promotion would be done in conjunction with the Environmental Health Officers to ensure proper sanitation in schools and a competition would be opened to reward the cleanest schools.

The Director-General for Health hinted that the exercise would be extended to the Pre-school level, where children from the Kindergarten would have their eyes and ears screened and vaccinated against communicable and non-communicable diseases.